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Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta 163states, in the Persian script in Chittagong. Numerous such instancesmay be there of the curious passage from one language into anotherof a popular text in India. There was also the case of translationsfrom Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit tales into simple Hindusthani thatwere again very popular and had a great impact on the language andliterature of the people. The translation scene, however, changedquite radically in the middle of the nineteenth century with theencounter between two very different linguistic and literary systems,Bangla and English, within asymmetrical power relations. In 1851,the Vernacular Literature Committee (later renamed Society), asemi-governmental institution was set up by Drinkwater Bethune,with help and co-operation from British and Indian scholars. InBangla the society was called Bangabhasanubadak Samaj or Societyfor Bangla Translation. In the preface to the first text Lord Clive(1852) published by the society, the author Harachandra Dutta wrotethat “the object of the association is distinctly stated to be, not onlyto translate but to adapt English authors into Bengali” (quoted inSukumar Sen, 1975:43). We can recognise the statement as layingout a colonialist project aimed at obliterating elements in the literarysystem and remoulding with an overarching purpose. The projecthowever, was only partially successful, for in practice, the societyproduced translations not only of British texts, but also of texts fromother literatures through English and from Indian literatures.However, the kind of literature that was translated, moral tales andsocial allegories, led to the production of similar texts in the original,gradually bringing in dichotomies and changes in the value system.But again, from a different point of view, activities of the societyalso contributed to significant changes in the use of the Banglalanguage that, along with other factors, led to the creation ofmasterpieces in prose in the next few decades. It would be aninteresting study to see how these changes were necessarily verydifferent from those brought about in the early stages of translationfrom Sanskrit into Bangla.